Our Goal for this Blog

Over the years we have received and continue to receive numerous phone calls and emails asking many different farm related questions. Our thought is that we would try out a blog to keep people up to date on what we are doing here on Puterbaugh Farms and at Hops Direct.

We will just jump right into where we are at in the growing season with a very brief look at what it took to get the hops to the stage they are in now. If interest is actually shown and people are looking for more information we will continue through the winter and pick up the beginning next spring, which will allow everyone to get a feel for what a full crop year looks like from a hop grower's perspective and all of the many challenges involved. We hope you enjoy.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Harvest has finally ended!!!

So maintaining a blog during harvest did not really happen... We finished up harvesting all of the hops on our farm about noon yesterday, October 2nd after starting harvest on August 20th. That is a whole bunch of days straight operating for 24 hours. Both picking machines were beginning to sounds little bit tired with stretched belts and chains that were beginning to break on a more regular basis.

Today marks the day that we began running our pellet mill. The Cascade's will be run through the mill first followed in an order yet to be determined by all the other varieties we carry. Since from our earlier surveys it seems like mostly homebrewers found interest in the blog the main question to answer here is when will pellets be available from the 2008 crop. The first varieties to run through the mill should be rolling out sometime next week. Between here and our forum we will try to keep everyone up to date.

Questions?

Please feel free to email us at hopsdirect@gmail.com if you have any questions related to this blog, if there is a topic you would like to know more about, or if there is a topic you might want us to talk about.

Thank you,

Hops Direct

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About Me

Puterbaugh Farms is a fourth generation family hop farm. We have been growing hops in the fertile Yakima Valley of Washington State since 1932. We reside in Mabton where we currently grow over 12 varieties of hops including the following: Bravo, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Cluster, Columbus, Galena, Mt. Hood, Nugget, Super Galena, Tettnanger, and Willamette. We also carry many other domestic varieties of hops and import hops from other growing regions around the world.